August 26th 2015

Summer’s End

Winter is coming – temperatures are starting to drop and the nights are almost dark. The final flight period is over and summer has officially come to an end.

It was a full season – raising the TAWO building, supporting a number of interesting research projects both large and small, and sending out a bunch of material no longer needed on site. We had 26 LC-130 Herc flights this summer and now the Guard has returned to New York to prepare for the upcoming Antarctic season.

Now we have closed for winter and there are just six of us left on station: Manager, Mechanic, Heavy Equipment Operator, and three Science Techs (PFS, NOAA, and ICECAPS). We still have HF radio and a satellite internet connection (though still limited bandwidth so no youtube or skype videos). Our next contact with the outside world will be in mid-October when the next crew arrives on a Twin Otter from Akureyri, Iceland. They’ll care for the instruments and station from October through February.

In the meanwhile we have our work cut out for us to winterize the station. Pallets need to be moved to the berm, buildings need to be dragged out away from the main station to limit drifting, and vehicles need to be winterized and parked away from station as well – and everything needs to be flagged and mapped! The winter drifting is unimaginable – huge pallets and whole buildings can disappear beneath drifts of snow. Come spring there’s too much snow to shovel all by hand so heavy equipment is used, however it’s all too easy to destroy things when you’re not exactly sure where every buried item is! So we must flag everything, photograph everything, map everything and hope that any changes are recorded with as much detail as possible.

It’s almost eerily quiet with everyone gone – 19 people left on the last plane. With no cook we’ll each be taking turns cooking, and travel even on station is more tightly controlled. Everyone carries a radio. It won’t get fully dark until November, after we’re gone, but the sun is setting earlier and earlier: tonight it will set at 9:30pm and rise at 3:51am. A week from now it will set at 8:45pm and rise at 4:24am. There have been some beautiful sunsets so far!

So thank you to everyone who participated this summer season!

The Summit Summer Crew

The last plane…

All quiet in the Big House

Sunset over the fuel pits on August 14th, 2015

Summit Sunsets

Sunset on August 6, 2015 at Summit (photo by “Medic Luke”)

At 72° 35’46″N 38° 25’19″W Summit is above the Arctic Circle. This means that for a few months each summer the sun never sets and the winters are long and dark. Unlike at the South Pole however, where there is only one sunrise and sunset each year (see my old post from Pole about sunsets here), Summit gets several months in the spring and fall with sunrises and sunsets. The last sunrise here was on May 6th, 2015 and last night, on August 6th, the long day ended. Though the sun technically set at 12:22am, rising again just 37minutes later at 12:59am, due to atmospheric distortions it didn’t visually appear to go below the horizon at all. Several people stayed up to watch, and the light was beautiful. It changes fast at these latitudes – tonight it will set at 11:54pm, rising again at 01:26am. This makes today unusual in that we have two sunsets on one day! One at 12:22am and another at 11:54pm….all a matter of arbitrary time zones (we’re on the same time as Kanger), but it’s kind of interesting nevertheless. It will continue setting earlier and rising later until November 14th when it will set for the last time, not to rise until January 28th! For more information about sun rise and set times and lengths of twilight check out this link: http://www.timeanddate.com/sun/greenland/summit-camp The North and South poles each have one sunrise and one sunset per year due to the tilt of the earth as it rotates around the sun. If the earth’s axis were perpendicular to its orbital plane the sun would appear to just skim the horizon year-round at the Poles and the rise and set times of the sun around the world would stay constant. It’s a beautiful confirmation of our planet and its position in space …

A diagram showing daylight on Earth on the equinoxes. (Wikipedia)

The US Naval Astronomical Observatory has a neat website that allows you to search for full sun and moon rise/set tables based on your city or lat/long. Check it out: http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneYear.php 2015 Chart for Summit Station, Greenland: And finally…one of my favorite things ever: www.solarsystemscope.com/daylightmap Pull the scroll bar
at the top to the right to speed up time, to the left to reverse. We’re roughly in the middle of Greenland, so try fast forwarding to Nov 14 and compare that to Jun 21, our longest day, or to Aug 6, our first sunset. Enjoy!

August 6, 2015 – First sunset (photo by “Medic Luke”)